Date: 7th Feb 2010 (2nd
before Lent)
Preacher:
Chris Green
Churches:
Draycott & Rodney Stoke
Readings and psalm:
Genesis
2.4b – 9, 15-25
Psalm
65
Revelation
4
Luke
8.22-25
I
wonder if some of you gardeners take satisfaction from our first reading, with
its picture of the first human being a gardener, and the garden itself as an
image of paradise. I am reminded of the line that ‘you are closer to God in a
garden than anywhere else on earth’.
[I
have to admit, this is depends rather on the garden. Ours reminds me more of
Genesis 1 at the moment, where the world was without form,
and void].
What
should we modern people make of creation stories such as those in the first
chapters of Genesis? We have our own, scientific ones- the big bang, the
development of stars and planets over billions of years, the gradual evolution
of life on earth. What can we learn from stories like those in Genesis?
Well
perhaps not cosmology, geology or biology, and certainly not herpetology[1].
But I don’t think that was what the writers were trying for. They were writing theology, and in a thoroughly Jewish
way, by telling stories.
And
the familiar story of Adam and Eve in the Garden is of course in two halves. In
the part we heard this morning, men and women are created to cherish God’s
world, to tend and name its creatures. But in the next act of the drama it all
goes wrong. They eat the forbidden fruit, the fruit of the tree of knowledge of
good and evil. Men and women are set at odds with God, with Nature, and with
each other.
The
graphic image for this is expulsion from the garden, never to return.
But God still cares for them. In a nice touch, he even provides clothes for
them to wear.
I
once saw a stage adaptation of Paradise Lost in which Adam and Eve, when they
first appear, are gloriously naked- not a stitch on. It takes a little getting
used to! But later on it seems really shocking when they shamefacedly
hide their nakedness. As they prepare for their life ‘outside’, they dress in
some ‘smart’ modern clothes, provided for them in a suitcase on stage. These
beautiful human creatures are somehow diminished and made ordinary.
The
story of the Garden of Eden is about how God intended us as partners in his
creation, but we mess it up. And what a metaphor for our own times! We are fast
running out of many natural resources. We are destroying the most diverse
habitats for life on earth - the rainforests, the coral reefs. We are polluting
the atmosphere and causing global warming. Even around here, people casually
toss rubbish out of their cars as they speed through lovely countryside. The
story of Adam and Eve in the garden conveys a profound truth. Our estrangement from God, from Nature, and from each other, are
aspects of the same thing.
But
this has another side. The natural world can also give us a way back into communion with God, and with
people. We can still say with psalm 8:
When I consider your heavens, the work of your hands, the
moon and the stars, what is man that you are mindful of him?
You made him a little lower than the angels, and crowned
him with glory and honour.
God
is not absent from the world after all, and the naked glory of humankind is
only hidden. Both are there to be rediscovered. But to see this, we first have
to treat the world- and other people- as God’s creation.
But what of our other reading, the
‘stilling of the storm’?
On the face of it, this is a very different kind of narrative from Genesis 2.
Jesus
is being taken as a passenger across the lake of Galilee, in a fishing- boat,
probably, when the boat is caught in a sudden local storm- not uncommon in
these parts. The wind howls, the waves are whipped up, the boat is shipping water,
the sailors are terrified. And Jesus sleeps, an
apparently oblivious passenger.
But
this story too can be read as parable, of God’s apparent absence from the
world.
Genesis
1 – the first creation story- pictures the world arising from a chaos of waters.
The Jews never lost their sense of the elemental force of the waters, and their
power of destruction. God destroys the world in the great flood, later in
Genesis. And in Exodus, the army of Pharaoh is destroyed in the Red Sea.
Well
if the raging storm conjures up elemental chaos and destruction, the boat
contains what is precious, and threatened. For the first Christians, persecuted
by Jews and Romans alike, their churches must have seemed like frail boats, in
danger of foundering. And they must have asked, “Where is our Saviour, is He asleep?”
And
we too may see this as an image of our
life of faith. We are tossed about by circumstance, self-doubt, despair. Where is our
Saviour when the storm blows up? And we may ask this on behalf of other people.
Where is God in the suffering of the people of Haiti after the earthquake - or
in the muddle of the international relief effort?
But
God is not to be bidden on our terms. We can’t rely on religion to be a kind of
life raft. Religious faith has to be that, in spite of all appearance, God is present, in every human situation. I leave you with this insight from the
Dominican Herbert McAbe:
False religion says- do not fear. Trust in God, for he
will see that none of the things you fear will happen.
True religion says- do not fear. The things you fear may
well happen to you- but they are nothing to be afraid of.
Amen.